5 02 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



muscular substance, "why is the production of a state of consciousness, 

 in the other case, not to be called a function of the cerebral substance ? 

 Once upon a time, it is true, it was supposed that a certain "animal 

 spirit " resided in muscle and was the real active agent. But we have 

 done with that wholly superfluous fiction so far as the muscular organs 

 are concerned. Why are we to retain a corresponding fiction for the 

 nervous organs ? 



If it is replied that no physiologist, however spiritual his leanings, 

 dreams of supposing that simple sensations require a " spirit " for their 

 production, then I must point out that we are all agreed that conscious- 

 ness is a function of matter, and that particular tenet must be given up 

 as a mark of materialism. Any further argument will turn upon the 

 question, not whether consciousness is a function of the brain, but 

 whether all forms of consciousness are so. Again, I hold it would be 

 quite correct to say that material changes are the causes of psychical 

 phenomena (and, as a consequence, that the organs in which these 

 changes take place have the production of such phenomena for their 

 function), even if the spiritualistic hypothesis had any foundation. 

 For nobody hesitates to say that an event A is the cause of an event 

 Z, even if there are as many intermediate terms, known and unknown, 

 in the chain of causation as there are letters between A and Z. The 

 man who pulls the trigger of a loaded pistol placed close to another's 

 head certainly is the cause of that other's death, though, in strictness, 

 he "causes" nothing but the movement of the finger upon the trigger. 

 And, in like manner, the molecular change which is brought about in 

 a certain portion of the cerebral substance by the stimulation of a re- 

 mote part of the body would be properly said to be the cause and the 

 consequent feeling, whatever unknown terms were interposed between 

 the physical agent and the actual psychical product. Therefore, un- 

 less materialism has the monopoly of the right use of language, I see 

 nothing materialistic in the phraseology which 1 have employed. 



The only remaining justification which Mr. Lilly offers for dubbing 

 me a materialist, malgre moi, arises out of a passage which he quotes, 

 in which I say that the progress of science means the extension of the 

 province of what we call matter and force, and the concomitant gradual 

 banishment from all regions of human thought of what we call spirit 

 and spontaneity. I hold that opinion now, if anything, more firmly 

 than I did when I gave utterance to it a score of years ago, for it has 

 been justified by subsequent events. But what that opinion has to do 

 with materialism I fail to discover. In my judgment it is consistent 

 with the most thoroughgoing idealism, and the grounds of that judg- 

 ment are really very plain and simple. 



The growth of science, not merely of physical science, but of all 

 science, means the demonstration of order and natural causation among 

 phenomena which had not previously been brought under those con- 

 ceptions. Nobody who is acquainted with the progress of scientific 



